Deep Canyon and the Arcane Spirit Wizard Tower

"Finally, I've fully advanced to Sequence 3..."

Rosen sensed his divine essence, which had grown to 86 points—just five points shy of the Sequence 3 limit of 91 points.

With the Primal Source Oil Lamp, and no shortage of faith, his divine essence would continue to grow naturally without requiring much effort on his part.

What truly concerned him was the continued growth of the World Tree and finding a suitable Sequence 8 miracle treasure.

He had plenty of Sequence 1 treasures, even a few at true god level.

But acquiring a high-potential Sequence 8 miracle treasure was proving incredibly difficult.

Take the Knight's Bridle at Sequence 9, for instance—its true value was on par with some Sequence 3 miracle treasures.

Aside from miracle treasures, Rosen also found himself lacking cultivation resources.

The inheritance from the Hunter True God and the Sequence 1 Bronze Dragon had already been largely consumed.

Only a few precious artifacts remained, while the supply of regular spiritual crystals and divine essence crystals had been nearly depleted.

The World Tree's growth was a bottomless pit—it devoured divine essence crystals at an alarming rate.

While the World Fruit had the potential to grow into a world as vast as the Abyss, in reality, the painting world within the first fruit was less than one ten-thousandth the size of the Abyss.

The reason for its small size was a lack of growth resources.

As a result, the first World Fruit was severely underdeveloped.

Despite being only Sequence 3, Rosen's expenses already exceeded those of many gods.

Cutting costs was out of the question—he had to find new revenue streams instead.

Generating resources from the Ancient God True Realm was difficult.

Although things had stabilized, with hundreds of billions of believers and billions of transcendent beings producing positive outputs, the realm's recent expansion required continuous investments to yield stable returns.

The Radiant Continent was in a similar situation.

Still in the development phase, it couldn't generate the level of profit Rosen desired.

To feed the World Fruit, Rosen had no choice but to put in extra work.

The quickest way to make money was treasure hunting.

However, he couldn't currently convert Miracle Treasure Maps.

His innate fortune was locked at true god level, which meant any Apocalypse Treasure Map he transformed would have to produce true god-level miracle maps.

Not only did that exceed the capacity of the Apocalypse Treasure Map, but even if it worked, Rosen wouldn't dare permanently use up his true god-level innate fortune.

Without the protection of his innate fortune, it wouldn't be difficult for true gods to trace the Painting Law Tree back to him.

Since the Apocalypse Treasure Map was out of the question, Rosen took out the Miracle Pouch.

It seemed that equal-value exchange was his only option for treasure hunting now, but he had to be certain that the target location held valuable treasures.

That meant he needed to make another trip to Storm Canyon.

Even disregarding its rare resources, the extraordinary Vial Series artifacts there were worth searching for.

...

Back at Storm Canyon, Rosen encountered no unexpected gatherings of divine-blooded beings this time.

Six months later, he had already reached nearly halfway into the canyon.

At this point, the environment in Storm Canyon became far more dangerous.

It wasn't just the relentless hurricanes and lightning.

Seawater was either whipped into torrential rain by the gales or directly broken down by lightning into hydrogen and oxygen, which the hurricanes would then sweep up to create terrifying explosions.

What was even more terrifying was that at this depth, the hurricanes and lightning contained powerful spirituality.

Without sufficient spirituality, no matter how strong the wind or thunder was, it couldn't threaten the life of a demigod.

But with powerful spirituality, the hurricanes and lightning became akin to living entities, actively locking onto any transcendent life forms.

As a result, hardly any transcendent beings were seen here, as Sequence 3 individuals had a high chance of being struck dead by lightning.

Each step Rosen took attracted lightning from tens of miles around, as if he were a walking lightning rod.

Coupled with the constant obstruction of hurricanes, every step forward was a struggle.

Even cults of evil gods didn't set up bases here—the weakest beings venturing into this area were at Sequence 2, usually in search of extraordinary resources born from this dangerous environment.

Expanding and retracting his world domain, Rosen managed to capture a Sequence 2 Wind Eye Stone amid the hurricanes.

This stone naturally contained both Hurricane Authority and Earth Authority.

Without the Earth Authority to stabilize it, the stone would have long been shattered by the hurricanes or destroyed by lightning strikes.

Such a transcendent material was highly valuable and could be used to craft power engines for void destroyers.

To an ordinary demigod, this would be a significant gain.

However, it was far from enough to satisfy Rosen.

He expanded his world domain to isolate the hurricanes and lightning before taking out the Miracle Pouch for equal-value exchange.

Casually pulling out Guardian War Armor, a Sequence 1 transcendent artifact that had once belonged to Lyric, he used it to enhance his treasure-seeking ability.

The war armor had been severely damaged by the Ashen Imprint's true damage, and without the advanced technology of the angel race, it was nearly impossible to repair.

Rather than keeping it, Rosen decided it was better used to strengthen his treasure-seeking abilities.

Through equal-value exchange, his Sequence 3 treasure-seeking ability was elevated to Sequence 1.

Sensing the locations and distances of various resources, Rosen activated the Void Eye miracle property of his Hunter's God-Eye, opening void wormholes near the coordinates one after another.

Extending his world domain like a fishing net, he captured resource treasures from all directions.

One by one, the treasures sensed by the Miracle Pouch disappeared until the high-value resources within a thousand-mile radius had been completely swept clean.

Before the enhancement period ended, Rosen casually painted a door, opened it, and stepped through to emerge thousands of miles away.

For the next few years, Rosen frantically searched for treasures throughout Storm Canyon using the Miracle Pouch.

However, the pouch consumed his fortune, and overall, his expenses exceeded his gains.

When his fortune dropped to a certain level, Rosen switched to using the Prophet Painter miracle skill to locate treasures.

The miracle property of Prophet Painter, Miracle Prophecy, had a terrifying power—whatever was spoken was destined to come true in theory.

If Rosen declared that a treasure would be blown to him by the hurricane, that prophecy would inevitably be fulfilled.

However, through repeated attempts, he discovered the theoretical limits of Miracle Prophecy.

First, the prophecy couldn't exceed his capabilities by too great a margin.

Second, the more frequently he made prophecies within a given period, the lower their success rate became.

As long as he maintained a good rhythm, Miracle Prophecy significantly boosted his gains.

...

One day, Rosen began his usual routine.

"I prophesy that today the Miracle Pouch will lock onto a vial-series miracle treasure..."

After completing the prophecy, he immediately activated the pouch's treasure-seeking function, targeting the vial-series miracle treasure.

He expected another failure, as usual, but to his surprise—there was a result this time!

Overjoyed, Rosen hurriedly advanced in the indicated direction.

Several hours later, he arrived at the left coastline of Storm Canyon, where he quickly located a massive sinkhole.

Hurricanes surged endlessly into the sinkhole, funneling deep underground.

The essence of wind was the flow of air, with cold air moving toward hot air to create wind.

In a sealed space, airflow couldn't continue, so the bottom of this sinkhole clearly held hidden mysteries.

Rosen jumped directly into the sinkhole, descending hundreds of miles underground, carried by the force of the hurricane.

At the bottom, he saw a vortex like a black hole, sucking in the falling hurricanes.

After scanning the area and finding no anomalies, Rosen leaped into the vortex.

Passing through it, he broke free from the hurricane's grip and pointed his finger at the void.

Divine essence fused with Light Authority as he relied on Divinity Attachment to touch the spatial dimension.

The pinpoint contact at his fingertip expanded, and to his astonishment, a small golden sun bloomed from the dimensional point.

The miniature sun painted within the spatial dimension immediately released warm sunlight, illuminating the dark underground space.

It was a massive underground mine, spanning a kilometer in diameter.

Judging by the surrounding rock walls, this was a high-purity Wind Copper Vein.

At the center of the cavern stood a towering wizard tower, a thousand meters tall, entirely forged from refined Wind Copper.

A colossal Wind Eye Stone, ten meters in diameter, was embedded at the tower's spire, absorbing the hurricanes funneled in from the sinkhole above.

Rosen examined it closely—this was a Sequence 2 Wizard Tower.

Even his Radiant King City only had a Sequence 3 Wizard Tower, and that had been a gift from the Star Coin King.

The higher the sequence level of such extraordinary structures, the rarer they became.

This Sequence 2 Wizard Tower was easily as valuable as a Sequence 0 Transcendent Artifact.

The tower was completely sealed off.

Forcing his way in was impossible since the strongest aspect of a wizard tower was the magical maze-lock enveloping its exterior.

Rosen walked up to the side of the tower and pulled out the Divine Brush, sketching a door onto its surface.

This door was rooted in Divinity Attachment and perfectly harnessed the Painting Law.

Every law had its unique qualities—for instance, spatial laws excelled at forming worlds and teleportation.

The Painting Law, however, excelled at mimicking all things and seamlessly creating or merging them.

This door mimicked the door to the Mysterious Study Room and was fused with spatial rules.

With a gentle push, the painted door swung open without triggering any of the tower's warning mechanisms.

Rosen stepped through the door and entered the tower.

However, the moment he entered, sealing magic arrays appeared in the hall on the first floor.

In the blink of an eye, Rosen was trapped within a confinement space built from the Darkness Rule.

"A wizard tower's intelligent core?" Rosen frowned.

Yet sensing the unique spiritual fluctuations of the sealing arrays, he quickly dismissed the idea.

"No... this is a Machina Spirit life form!"

This was troublesome.

If it had been an intelligent core, wizards typically restricted its control over the tower to prevent it from developing self-awareness.

But a Machina Spirit was different—it could fully wield the tower's power even without a wizard.

Rosen realized brute force was now his only option, and he had to watch out for possible self-destruction commands from the Machina Spirit.

He slipped into the Void Shadow Realm, simultaneously deploying dozens of Sequence 4 Shadow Demons, scattering them throughout the tower.

If the Machina Spirit focused on blocking the Shadow Demons, they would help relieve the pressure.

If it ignored them, Rosen could use the paths they opened to traverse directly to their locations through the Void Shadow Realm.

It wasn't long before dozens of Shadow Demons were imprisoned by sealing barriers.

But Rosen seized the opportunity, blasting through the sealing barriers with Dragon God's Wrath and forcing his way to the third floor of the tower.

Sensing the threat Rosen posed, the Machina Spirit began ignoring the Shadow Demons altogether.

However, Rosen's charge up the tower was faster—he quickly used the Void Shadow Realm to reach the sixth floor.

There, he came to an abrupt stop.

The seventh floor wouldn't be so simple.

A Sequence 2 Wizard Tower had a total of eight floors.

The top floor typically served as the energy core and control center, while the floor just beneath it was usually the wizard's living quarters.

If an intruder managed to reach this level, it meant that all the seal defenses on the lower levels had failed.

Further attempts to seal and block the intruder were pointless.

At this point, the wizard tower would no longer worry about internal damage during combat.

Thus, this level no longer employed gentle sealing techniques but would resort to killing the intruder at all costs.

Rosen activated the Sacred Light Protection of his Holy Lion Cloak, expanded his life-origin Qi Shield, and deployed his world domain.

After stacking his defenses to the fullest, he pushed open the door to the seventh level of the wizard tower.

Beyond the door was a metal passageway.

The door behind him vanished, transforming into part of the metallic corridor.

Both the front and rear passages curved slightly, and the deep roar of a hurricane echoed from the path ahead.

Rosen punched the ten-meter-wide metal wall, only to leave no trace behind.

Even a shot from Dragon God's Wrath left merely a pin-sized dent.

Not only were the side walls indestructible, but the ceiling and floor were made of equally resilient materials—at least Sequence 1-level extraordinary alloys, complete with damage reduction and spiritual absorption properties, fully maxed out for defense.

Rosen soon saw a Wind Dragon barreling toward him down the corridor, accelerating as it advanced.

One shot from Dragon God's Wrath shattered the wind dragon, but countless more followed in its wake.

Rosen had no choice but to retreat, but he quickly realized that he was trapped in a circular corridor with no discernible exits.

Within this ring-shaped passage, endless wind dragons were continuously generated.

His only options were to break through the corridor or be torn apart by the wind dragons.

Rosen expanded his world domain to withstand the wind dragons' onslaught and drew a door on the inner wall of the passage.

Pushing it open, he stepped directly into the true seventh level of the wizard tower.

The space was vast and flat, stretching for dozens of miles.

Within it stood over a thousand Alchemical Golems.

The weakest were Sequence 3, and three were as powerful as Sequence 1.

At that moment, over a thousand long-range magical attacks, at minimum Sequence 3, locked onto Rosen and rained down upon him in a devastating barrage.

There was no room to dodge.

Under temporal acceleration, Dragon God's Wrath fired countless Mind Bullets, obliterating every approaching magical skill.

There was even enough firepower left to activate the Void Eye miracle property and open void wormholes behind the alchemical golems for sneak attacks with mind bullets.

The elusive mind bullets struck fatal points on the Sequence 3 alchemical golems, piercing them with true damage.

Realizing that the Sequence 3 alchemical golems were ineffective, the Machina Spirit immediately activated spatial teleportation, removing all the Sequence 3 units.

Only three Sequence 1 and nine Sequence 2 alchemical golems remained.

One of the Sequence 1 golems activated a small-scale Warped Space Domain.

Because the area was small, the spatial distortion was extremely strong, destabilizing the void wormholes created by the Void Eye and giving the golems time to evade the mind bullet ambushes.

A Sequence 1 assassin-type golem, no taller than 1.5 meters and wielding a short dagger, suddenly vanished into stealth.

Meanwhile, a mage-like golem unleashed a hurricane that swept across the entire space for dozens of miles.

Using the hurricane as cover, the assassin golem silently closed in on Rosen without making a sound.

The assassin golem didn't launch a sneak attack from behind but instead merged with the hurricane for a frontal assault.

Rosen couldn't see the golem, but his seventh sense warned him in advance that he was about to be struck from the front.

Just before the assassin golem's strike, Rosen unleashed Silence Hidden in Thunder through Ancient God Divine Sound.

The Ancient God Divine Sound amplified Silence Hidden in Thunder more than tenfold.

The soundless dragon roar compressed into a concentrated sound wave that struck the assassin golem, instantly shattering the spirituality infused by the wizard tower's Machina Spirit, rendering the golem inert and entering standby mode.

Rosen collected the assassin golem—it was at least equivalent to a Sequence 1 professional in the Bronze Sequence.

Had it not been for his surprise counter with Silence Hidden in Thunder, neutralizing this golem up close would have come at a significant cost.

With the assassin golem no longer a threat, Rosen began flickering through the void, firing rapid shots as he moved at high speed.

The greatest strength of the alchemical golems was their formidable defense, but Ashen Imprint excelled at breaking defenses.

One by one, the golems' control cores were destroyed, and they toppled in succession.

However, Rosen didn't stay to destroy them all, quietly slipping into the eighth floor of the wizard tower.

He feared that completely dismantling all the golems would trigger the Machina Spirit's self-destruction program.

What he wanted was an intact wizard tower, not one turned into a massive bomb and blown to pieces.

Under the cover of his world domain, Rosen left a self-portrait avatar to kite the golems while his true body used the concealment of the Wolf Totem to sneak along the spatial edge into the Mysterious Study Room.

Through its window, he re-entered the seventh floor and infiltrated the living quarters of the tower.

The living quarters lacked strong surveillance and detection systems since wizards themselves typically didn't want to be monitored by the Machina Spirit.

Any enemy capable of breaching the ring-shaped corridor and defeating a thousand alchemical golems wouldn't be stopped by the living quarters anyway.

Rosen proceeded straight from the living quarters to the eighth floor.

However, not long after infiltrating, he triggered the eighth-floor alarm magic array.

The Machina Spirit didn't hesitate—it immediately activated the wizard tower's self-destruct sequence.

The elemental furnace at the tower's pinnacle began to forcefully initiate self-destruction.

In that instant, Rosen expanded his world domain over the tower's top floor and cast Time Pause.

Time froze for several hours as Rosen forcefully controlled the Machina Spirit using Spirituality Dominion.

Despite gaining control, the furnace's self-destruction process couldn't be stopped.

The terrifying wind element within was powerful enough to kill even a Sequence 1 being, and not even Time Reversal could undo it.

Rosen could only command the Machina Spirit to dismantle the elemental furnace and seal it as a backup bomb.

With the wizard tower successfully secured, Rosen began cataloging his gains with the help of the Machina Spirit.

Apart from the tower itself and the alchemical golems, the most valuable find was a Sequence 3 alchemical golem production line, along with the vast stockpile of extraordinary materials stored in the alchemical laboratory.

There was also an enormous quantity of wind-element spiritual crystals generated over thousands of years by the furnace absorbing hurricanes.

However, the vial-series miracle treasure he had sought throughout the tower was nowhere to be found.

(End of Chapter)